Yesterday

Every once in a while, there’s an iOS game that you don’t play on the go because you want to devote all of your attention to it. Yesterday is one of those games, which doesn’t surprise us given the game’s stellar performance on the PC.

Yesterday is a point-and-click adventure game which provides an immersive and wholly creepy experience. This gameplay mechanic has been used in a variety of lighthearted games, but Yesterday delves into psychopaths, amnesia, immortality, and satanism. It is certainly not for the faint of heart, but fans of the horror genre will appreciate the fact that it doesn’t pull any punches with the plot.

To progress the story, you have to solve a variety of puzzles by interacting with 2D environments, collecting items, and combining them to complete a variety of tasks. These puzzles are pretty challenging, and you can expect to rely on guesswork and lots of experimentation before coming to the answer. The intentionally vague hints can’t be accessed until you’ve done some guessing, which allows for a feeling of accomplishment even if you resort to them. Dynamic though each puzzle may be, however, there is only ever one solution, which is slightly disappointing.

“Thank you for attending the world’s first ape-to-human brain transplant–“

The translation to iOS works pretty well, with a few hiccups. There’s a button for highlighting all of the hotspots on the screen, which is vital if you’re playing on a small iOS device. On the other hand, there’s a violation of our iOS Bill of Rights, in that you often wish you had invisible fingers for manipulating the small objects. You also may wish for smaller fingers to better manage the buttons, but these flaws didn’t prove to be enough to really detract from the game.

What makes this game worthy of playing is its story. It’s narrated through the puzzles, as well as numerous cut scenes, which have a cool graphic novel style. The amnesiac protagonist’s flashbacks often involve puzzles within themselves, so it’s not uncommon to find yourself playing a story within a story, which we really liked. The narrative, while dark, is compelling and emotional, and it has as many twists as those in the antagonist’s psychopathic mind, a fact compounded by the game’s alternate endings.

“Next stop: Self-loathing and Despair.”

We’re very appreciative to see such a high quality game on iOS. The puzzles, sound, story, and animation in Yesterday all combine to provide an immersive experience that encourages you to sit down and lose yourself in the game. Impatient gamers and those who don’t have a stomach for the dark themes might want to steer clear, but others will find this one altogether worth their time and money. Here’s hoping that the whistling doesn’t appear in your dreams.

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The fine folks at Milkbag games have released Sidewords. A fun little diversion of a word game that is the devil child of crosswords and scrabble. For each level in the game the grid must be completed to win the level — this means that each letter at the top and side must be used. And not just the top or side, but each word must be made up of letters from the top and side to create a grid. It’s a pain, but in the right kind of way. Even the simplest of the levels can be a head scratcher until you get used to the game. Well worth the $3 as a diversion while we wait for Milkbag to finally release Snow Siege.

We’d like to thank our sponsor for this week, Zap Zap Kindergarten Math.

It’s not always easy to tear your kids away from their tablets and make them do something edifying. Thankfully, Zap Zap Kindergarten Math relieves you of this task by turning mathematics into a fun touchscreen video game. Win win!

Aimed at children 3-6 years old, the app makes math fun by ‘gamifying’ it, turning simple mathematics problems into little challenges so that your pre-schooler can learn and play at the same time.

There are more than two dozen mini-games, split across three categories: Numbers, Shapes and Measurements, and Add and Subtract. According to the developer the difficulty of these puzzles is adaptive too, so kids of any ability can be both encouraged and challenged.

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Pewter Games has brought their charming point and click adventure The Little Acre to iOS. It’s an amazingly beautiful animated adventure set in a sort of hybrid magical / alien world. A great all ages adventure and very fun.

We’d like to thank our sponsor for this week, The House of Da Vinci by Blue Brain Games. There’s a reason Leonardo Da Vinci is the only renaissance figure who routinely shows up in video games you know. With his remarkable inventiveness and genius for creative problem-solving, Da Vinci was a gamer through and through. He was just born 500 hundred years too soon. Thankfully, there are studios like Blue Brain Games to bring him to life in videogame form. The House of Da Vinci, which comes to us courtesy of a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign, is a puzzler that seeks to channel the artistry and innovation of its title character.

You play as one of Da Vinci’s more promising apprentices, and you have the challenging task of trying to work out where the hell he’s gone. Was he assassinated by the church? Who knows. Has he quietly gone into a retirement? Perhaps. Did he accidentally invent a shrink ray and shrink himself down to the size of an dustmite? Probably not. Da Vinci’s workshop looks beautiful, thanks to some impressive 3D graphics, and the in-game environment is crammed with all the elaborate machines and crazy inventions you’d expect to find in the workplace of a renaissance genius.(more…)

Poly Bridge is out now on iOS, and it’s good to have it! It’s a great game and many seem to agree that it’s the best bridge builder game available. But the iOS versions, so far, is missing the sandbox mode. I would hope that it’s coming soon in an update. If you are all interested in physics puzzlers, grab this one. (Note: the video is for the PC version, I have yet to see a trailer for the mobile version, the developer Dry Cactus isn’t that great at marketing…)

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